Romney Fights Back He has no intention of running a model, but losing, campaign.

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What to make of the puerile back and forth? It would be easy to tsk-tsk the shallowness of such kindergarten name-calling, which diverts attention from domestic and foreign policies. Or political observers could argue that the Obama campaign is successfully creating all sorts of diversions from a dismal economic record; in each instance Romney’s handlers are forced to take their eyes off 40 months of 8 percent–plus unemployment or 50 million people now on food stamps.

But there is a far better lesson from the Romney counterpunching: Apparently his campaign is not going to be a repeat of Mike Dukakis’s smiley-face efforts when knocked silly by the late Lee Atwater’s no-holds-barred management of George H. W. Bush’s 1988 campaign. Nor will 2012 prove anything like 2008, when John McCain took all sorts of issues off the table — from Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers to scrutiny of Obama’s memoirs. Note in this regard the frequency with which an increasingly desperate Obama is now praising the McCain campaign, in contrast to the supposed extremism of Romney — as if an incumbent president George H. W. Bush would have admonished a “war room” Bill Clinton to emulate the more noble tone of Dukakis’s failed effort.

Romney’s ostensible point, of course, is not to allow scurrilous stories to linger in the press. And he probably wants to create deterrence by warning the Obama campaign that for each petty story of a teenager pushed down by Romney a half-century ago, there will be a middle-school girl whom a younger Obama rudely pushed away — and that was according to Obama’s own telling.

Anyone who doubts Romney’s capacity to fight has foolishly underestimated him (and we heard plenty of that during the primaries):

But the real significance of firing back is not just to balance impressions with the general public or to warn Team Obama of the boomerang effect each time they offer up a new diversion. Instead, it is to remind the Republican base that Romney intends to go all out, and would rather win a bloody fight than lose in noble aloofness.

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So when Romney refused to disown the mercurial Trump, he sent quite the opposite message from McCain’s or Dole’s — something like “I don’t need the associate of Bill Ayers, Jeremiah Wright, and Tony Rezko to tell me with whom to appear.” Apparently, each time Obama issues a “How dare you?” Romney is not going to point fingers at his own backers, but rather will fire back with a “How dare you dare me?”

Romney is taking the gamble that whatever damage may be done by his overzealous supporters is hardly commensurate with the damage of sanctimoniously castigating them in order to win approval from the press and the Obama campaign. In other words, Romney would prefer winning in 2012 to being praised by liberals in 2016 for running a model, but losing, campaign.

That fact alone — not litmus tests of his conservatism or assessments of his style — will be the dominating factor in the Romney campaign, and it will make 2012 quite unlike 2008.

The headline read, “Romney for President Launches New Web Video: Obama Isn’t Working: Where are the Jobs?”

The video spoke to the difficulties that new college graduates are having finding work in a brutal job market. This bit of campaign propaganda went straight at the core of President Obama’s political base — young Americans who volunteered for him by the tens of thousands in 2008 and powered him to victory in state after state. If joblessness disillusions enough of those voters, the president will be in trouble.

Romney’s exercise was just a passing bit of politics unlikely to make many waves in an environment obsessed with debt and fears of betrayal among conservatives and liberals alike. But it was hugely instructive.

The Romney video was more in touch with what voters are worried about than anything going on inside our famous Beltway. Consider a Gallup Poll released last week. Asked what was the most important problem facing the country, 31 percent of Americans said the economy and an additional 27 percent specifically said unemployment and jobs, for a total of 58 percent. Only 16 percent listed the deficit or the debt.

[...] Romney is campaigning on the electorate’s animating issue. It’s a nice division of labor for the GOP. Obama is caught up in the tea party’s priorities. Romney isn’t. It’s upside-down politics.

Then there is Romney himself. The conventional wisdom is that he is a weak front-runner, short of support from a Republican establishment that should be rallying around him. [...] The interest in Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s probable candidacy reflects a hunger on the Republican side for more choices.

Yet Perry will also prove to be a flawed candidate who is far to the right of the country. And on one front, he will enter the race with the worst of both worlds. With his Texas swagger, he will remind those who don’t like George W. Bush of George W. Bush. But many supporters and confidantes of the former president don’t like Rick Perry at all, regarding him as a lightweight who has turned on his patron.

After nearly three years of Obama and after his $787 BILLION failed stimulus plan, unemployment has grown from 7.8% to 9.2%. These figures (which aren’t bumps in the road) don’t reflect the underemployed and those who have given up on finding a job in the Obama economy.

Wow. I’m glad I woke up early enough to catch this lil’ gem on twitter this morning.

With another superbly-produced, timely web video the Romney camp shows once again that it has the tact and wherewithal to take Obama head-on. This time, the video preempts an Obama town hall, set to take place at the University of Maryland today.

Please watch and share your thoughts:

UPDATE by Jayde – As a follow-up and additional confirmation to Gov Romney’s excellent series of ‘OBAMA ISN’T WORKING’ videos, hear what Howard Davidowitz (CEO of Davidowitz & Associates) had to say yesterday about the Obama Depression:

Meanwhile, state and local governments have cut 142,000 jobs this year [...] and Wall Street is braced for another round of cutbacks. This week, Goldman Sachs announced plans to let go 1000 fixed-income traders.

If these trends continue, we may soon be talking about losses in the monthly employment data — not just disappointing growth, says Howard Davidowitz, CEO of Davidowitz & Associates.

“Everything in business is confidence,” Davidowitz says. “You lose confidence and businesses can’t deal with that [and] who could have confidence with what’s going on in Washington?”